


Choices.

by Illyah



Series: Snapshots. [2]
Category: Shameless - Fandom
Genre: M/M, See Previous Installment Tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 18:11:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9453692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Illyah/pseuds/Illyah
Summary: Mickey give Lip advice, and asks for some of his own. And, he gets a job.Next up. Ian.





	

Lip was tired. He’d finally gotten his drinking under control and gotten back into the world of academia. He was still upset about ChiPoly but had settled into his new school nicely. It wasn’t as challenging as his old school but it would get him the degree he needed to move on somewhere else for graduate school. He knew now that sleeping with his professor was a mistake, a road he never should have gone down, but he was a Gallagher, they were all known for making terrible choices.

He had taken primarily engineering classes at ChiPoly, so he had a fair amount of Gen Ed requirements that he needed to make up. He ended up in some bullshit anthro class that he thought he could ace in his sleep. His eyes shot up when his teacher called out Mykah Milkovich, thinking it must be a coincidence, but when the name’s owner raised his hand, he found himself looking over his shoulder, staring straight at an extremely blonde Mickey Milkovich. What the actual fuck? He needed to get to the bottom of this, so he decided to just go for broke and go talk to the guy.

Lip thought he looked good. Happier, less jumpy; it was a weird thing to see. Even if he squinted he couldn’t see a trace of the dirty boy from all those years ago. He went with something easy.

“I always thought your name was Michael?” He said conversationally and Mickey snorted. They exchanged small talk for a few moments, before Mickey realized that he had to get to class, and made it clear to Lip that he didn’t want to know anything about Ian, nor did he want Ian to know where he was. Which was fine with Lip, because it seemed like Mickey had finally gotten his shit together while Ian was still un-medicated and imploding.

Lip shook his head, he loved his family more than anything, but most of the time he felt that they fed each other’s chaos. Ian’s disease fed Lip’s drinking, which in turn, fed Fiona’s bad habits, creating a never ending cycle of unhealthy drama. He wondered why Mickey looked as good as he did. He’d never expected Mickey to be the one that got out. But if Mickey wanted to be free of Ian, that was the least that Lip could do, so he agreed, knowing that his promise to be silent would eventually catch up to him one way or the other.

He was exhausted Monday morning when he went into class. Ian had a tough weekend and Lip was up most of the time just trying to get Ian to maintain for a few hours so that he could get some sleep. He wasn’t sure how Ian’s care ended up resting mostly with him and Fiona, and he couldn’t help but resent Ian slightly for not taking the medication. Eventually they were going to have to do something about it, because he refused to be his brother’s keeper forever.

So yeah, he was tired, and really didn’t fucking want to go talk about sex and society or whatever shit this class was.

Mickey saw Lip walk in, looking completely exhausted, and immediately recognized that he’d been dealing with an un-medicated Ian at the moment. For some reason, and he blamed Ian for making him soft, he went up to Lip at the end of the class.

“You have un-medicated Ian face. Which is even shittier than your normal face.” Because he was still a Milkovich.

Lip chuckled and rolled his eyes. “How’d you know?” He asked, stifling a yawn.

“Because I looked at that face in the mirror for months.” Mickey told him honestly. He remembered how out of his depth he’d felt and how scared and tired he’d been.

“How’d you do it?” Lip asked him quietly. “He’s my brother and we grew up together and somehow you’re better at this than I was. So how?”

“Give yourself fifteen minutes at the end of the day to be angry. Get pissed. At the disease, at Ian, whatever. Cry. Then you let the day go, get some sleep, and wake up the next day and do it all over again, because that’s what we do for the people we love.” Mickey told him, like it was the easier thing in the world.

“I hate that you’re actually fucking smart.” Lip grumbled.

They parted, Lip to get to class, and Mickey to head into work. Mickey was frustrated, and was feeling that long forgotten, yet somehow still very familiar fission of angry with Ian. Why on earth wouldn’t Ian want to get better? Mickey tried to remember what it’d felt like to be in that place a couple years ago. Whatever. He had to go serve shitty rich people what was in his opinion, massively overpriced food in a stupidly fancy environment.

Mickey rolled his eyes, feeling gay as fuck, “Hey Lip!” He called over his shoulder. “Don’t let Ian’s shit steamroll over your shit. What you need’s important too.” He said, walking away before Lip even opened his mouth.

Mickey had just gone out for smoke, after finishing his last table of the night. He was uncovering his finger tattoos, when the man from his last table came up to him.

“My name is James and I run a very specific kind of business.” He started and Mickey was immediately unnerved, this was either about drugs, sex, or guns.

Mickey remained silent, which the guy didn’t seem to find off-putting. “Anyway, I run a club that caters to the male half of the population, and the whole”, he waved his hand, indicating all of Mickey, “violent twink thing is really in right now.”

“Not really interested in gargling old man balls, if that’s what this is about.” Mickey said raising an eyebrow.

The man shrugged. “To each his own, but it pays $15k per weekend and more if you do private parties. Interested now?”

Mickey nodded, because that was stupid money. That was get-his-family-out-of-the-ghetto-money. “I’d have to be stupid not to be, now fucking wouldn’t I?”

The man passed over his card. “Give me a call when you figure it out. The club’s address is on there. You could start next Friday.”

Mickey thought a lot about the proposition on the way back to his house, when he was brushing his teeth, when he was taking his meds, and when he was falling asleep. He just couldn’t see the downside of this arrangement. He’d never had a problem with sex work, unless it was his boyfriend who was doing it. He remembered back to the time that Ian did porn to make money. He remembered the argument that they had, and Ian telling him to calm down.

“You have unprotected sex because someone told you they were clean? You think ‘yeah, that’s a good idea?’” He’d raged, and become sickened when Ian tried to touch him. “ _Don’t touch me!”_

“I don’t see that the big deal is.” Ian shrugged.

“ _WE_ HAVE UNPROTECTED SEX, IAN!” he’d screamed, not giving a single shit who heard him, he was the outset of outs at this point after all.

But then he’d have to concede the point to himself that this was different, he knew what he was getting into, and he wasn’t sick or stupid.

Mickey figured before he made any choices he should probably talk to Svet or Mandy, since he knew for sure at least Svet had experience with that aspect of sex work.

When he finally got off the L and back into his old neighborhood, he was overcome more than ever with the need to get his family the fuck out of there. Not necessarily North Side, or not living in a house that belonged to his father, who had personally wronged every person living in his house. Not to mention none of them knew what they would do when Terry was released and wanted to come home.

He had a couple ideas he wanted to run by the girls.

“Svet! Douchebag!” He called as he opened the door and was immediately attacked by a small ball of blonde hair and tiny toddler legs. “Daddy!” he cheered, grabbing for his brother’s legs.

“Hey kiddo.” Mickey said, picking him up and messing with his hair, they had decided to wait until Yev was older to tell him the truth about his parentage, but right now Svet and Mandy were doing the majority share of raising him while Mickey went to school. Svetlana knew that he both loved and had mixed feelings about Yev. It was something they had talked a lot about while he was in the hospital, when she would come in for therapy, and had eventually started seeing someone on her own.

“Misha!” Svetlana said, smiling. “Glad you’re here.” Her English really had gotten so much better, one of the first things that Mickey had done when he got his job at the restaurant was sign Svetlana up for an English as a Second Language class at Malcolm X, and she’d breezed right through it.

Slowly she’d been helping Mickey and Mandy remember the fluent Russian they used to speak before their mother died and their father only allowed English and Ukrainian, it’d gone very well so far.

He had some concerns he needed to speak to Svet about, regarding his illnesses and his history.

“Svet, you have you heard of,” he pulled out the card “The Atrium?” He asked, and she grabbed the card out of his hands.

“It’s a gay escort club for rich men with tiny dicks.” She laughed. “Very, very good money.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, tell me about it. They want me to start next weekend. It’s so much fucking money, Svet.”

“And how do _you_ feel about it?” She asked, sincerely.

“As long as it’s not women, I’ll be fine.” He told her. And he was right, and she knew it.

Now that that was settled, he knew she’d have told him if she thought it was a bad idea, but mostly he just wanted someone to not freak out about it, it was time to fill her in on the rest of the plan. “Mandy!” He shouted and she hurried into the kitchen.

“Dads in jail for at least another two years, this new gig works out, in three months, we stop paying the mortgage. Let them foreclose on the house. Then we buy it. It’s ours. Terry can’t come back. Ever.” He said. He’d given this a fair bit of thought and he figured that the house wouldn’t be worth more than like $45k, so that should be pretty easily done. Mickey couldn’t help but laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Mandy asked, looking between Mickey’s laughing face and Svetlana’s mischievous smile.

“Rainbow boy over there, is going to fuck us out of the ghetto.”


End file.
